He was born and raised in New York, received a BA (Liberal Arts) from Amherst College and a PhD (Biochemistry and Cell Biology) at Rockefeller University. After 12 years in the Department of Biology at Brookhaven National Laboratory as a tenured Biochemist, he came to the Faculty of Medicine of Ribeirao Preto, USP in 1974. He is  Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology, has trained 40 Masters and Doctoral students and Post-Doctorate fellows, and has written more than 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals. His interest in the use of language and scientific communication, in 1980, led him, with Sergio H. Ferreira and Eduardo M. Krieger, to assume the responsibility for editing the Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research, a journal sponsored by a federation of 5 Biomedical societies and published in English. Its o bjective is to communicate the results of Brazilian biomedical research to the first world. He has been Editor of this Journal for 24 years and his presentation will be based on this experience.